


The Last of Us

by likeromeoandjuliet



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Betty will find the cure, F/M, Jughead Jones Loves Betty Cooper, Minor Character Death, The Last of Us AU, They’ll be little shits you know it, but she won’t kill Ellie, she’ll save her, the logistics of it all are still uncertain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:47:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29357445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeromeoandjuliet/pseuds/likeromeoandjuliet
Summary: It used to be so simple. The simple line that separated good from evil. The decisions everyone used to make. A way of life that revolved around jobs and friends and school and restaurants and bars and lovers. It used to be easy, experiencing heartbreak, healing, getting out the door in the morning in broad daylight, Christmas and birthdays and a life worth living. TV shows to melt your brain and going to the movies to sit there and eat popcorn before the movie even began. Stupid crushes and cakes and candy and museums and vacations to paradise like places.Governments and world leaders and organisations that kept the world in order, all the trains in their tracks, going on their way, back and forth, everyday. Taxes. Cars. Mortgages. Capitalism. Political parties. The internet. The president. Oil driven wars. Jobs. College.What would you do if it all ended?What would you do if it all changed?Your life. Your priorities. Your family. Your friends. Safety. Comfort. Death. Life.“How bad is it?”OrIt’s a The Last of Us AU. They find each other in the apocalypse.
Relationships: Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	The Last of Us

It used to be so simple. The simple line that separated good from evil. The decisions everyone used to make. A way of life that revolved around jobs and friends and school and restaurants and bars and lovers. It used to be easy, experiencing heartbreak, healing, getting out the door in the morning in broad daylight, Christmas and birthdays and a life worth living. TV shows to melt your brain and going to the movies to sit there and eat popcorn before the movie even began. Stupid crushes and cakes and candy and museums and vacations to paradise like places. 

Governments and world leaders and organisations that kept the world in order, all the trains in their tracks, going on their way, back and forth, everyday. Taxes. Cars. Mortgages. Capitalism. Political parties. The internet. The president. Oil driven wars. Jobs. College. 

What would you do if it all ended? 

What would you do if it all changed? 

Your life. Your priorities. Your family. Your friends. Safety. Comfort. Death. Life. 

“How bad is it?” 

_ Bad. Fuck, we’re going to die. My ears are still ringing from the explosion. I’m out of amo on the rifle, I have three bullets left in the pistol. There are hundreds of them out there.  _

“Betty! Get back!” Polly screams when the door starts giving in. 

“Fuck!” She steps back, against the wall, looking around. They need a way out, this was not supposed to happen. This was supposed to be clear, this building was clear, but they opened a goddamn can of worms. Clickers and Stalkers chased after them, there was no escape other than this room, they were coming from all sides, she tried to eliminate them but they were too many. 

Polly’s looking around frantically for a way out while she gets ready for a fight. 

“Betty, we can get through!” Polly’s crouching in front of a hole on the wall. 

“Go, go!” She yells as the infected break through the door and she runs to Polly, shooting behind her. 

A Clicker grabs her foot as she crawls through. “Polly! Throw the Molotov!” The Clicker goes up in flames as Betty manages to get through.“We gotta keep moving!” 

They keep running until they’re out of the building. Polly slumps against the brick wall, she looks around, accessing the danger around, happy to find that its empty and quiet. She looks back at Polly, who looks exhausted and thinner than she used to be, weakened by them being on the run, on this fucked up crusade to find a home or semblance of safety. 

“You good?” Betty questions, quietly, returning her pistol into her holster. 

Polly nods. “We made it.” 

With a snort, Betty shakes her head. “Lost count of how many times you’ve said that.” 

“Yeah, well, I hope I can keep saying it.” Her sister throws back at her, Betty manages a small smile, she does too. God, she hopes they can keep saying they made it out at the end of this. If there is an ending. 

“We have to go before it gets dark.” She says softly. “We can set up in the court house, down the street, seems safe. We can take turns sleeping.” 

“Right.” Polly murmurs. “Think we’re close?” 

Betty doesn’t answer right away because the answer honestly isn’t clear, because the lead they had wasn’t clear. They’d been on the road, away from the last camp they had been at, for a month and they were still a long way off. They were closer now than they were five years ago when the Fireflies were dismantled, but it didn’t mean they were close. For all they knew, this could be another mislead. It could be an ambush, it could be WLF luring them in again. After all, Betty was wanted. Her knowledge was valuable, she was the one her mother taught. She knew more than most people did. 

There was hope though. And a feeling. This was it. It had to be it because she was tired of fighting, tired of failing again and again. She longed for a little bit of peace, a routine even. No surprises. No pain. No fear. Just something. Anything. 

“You think this might be it?” Polly questions, falling in step with her. Polly’s always been so aloof even in the middle of everything. She supposes her dad always kept her more sheltered, while Betty sought out the deeper meaning of things, she questioned things, everything, even all that seemed to be established. And her instinct was usually right. Polly liked to talk to the cute boys at camp, at the shooting ranges she usually pretended to not know how to use a gun just so they’d touch her. She never liked hard work, she liked to find elaborate ways to avoid it. 

“We’ll see, Polly.” 

She felt like the older sister, most of the time, making sure Polly was safe, that she didn’t walk in somewhere and get killed. That she didn’t get distracted and hurt. Polly is all she has left. And in this world, family means everything. It means you aren’t alone. That at least, love is still real and possible and that violence and surviving isn’t all there it. 

“You remind me of mom.” Polly tells her quietly and Betty wants to reject the idea for a moment. There are days she wishes she could forget their parents even existed, just so she could forget the day they lost them. Polly had been lucky, she’d been asleep, in their bunk. Betty was in the lab with Alice. Hal was on patrol that night. 

“You remind me of dad.” Betty tells her, nudging her. 

“Not sure how to take that.” Polly laughs softly. “I’d like to think I’m a little more...” 

“You’re kinder. Softer.” She says, a finality in her voice. “Dad had to be like the way he was. To prepare us for the world out here. I don’t blame him.” 

Her sister shrugs. “He could’ve done both.” 

“Maybe.” 

“You think mom loved him?” 

“That’s...a loaded question.” They’re still walking down the street, the abandoned streets of what it used to be. Nature taking over the remnants of the past, tall buildings stained with green, no longer kept pristine. “I think...people get used to loving someone. It becomes less about love and more about what’s safe. Dad kept us safe and I think...maybe that was enough.” 

“That’s not...fair.” 

“Yeah, Pol, not a lot of things in this world are. Mom knew that. We all had to make sacrifices.” 

“Downer.” Polly bites back and Betty rolls her eyes. There’s a pause, they walk in silence. Betty liked the moments of silence where she didn’t have to think, she didn’t have to reflect as Polly often had her do with her questions and her thoughts. Polly liked to throw in questions to fill the time, the silence. And she never realised that her questions were never just questions, that when she talked about the past, Betty remembered fear and pain and screams. 

“God, look at this, “hairdresser”.” Polly stops in front of shop. “It must’ve been nice to worry about your hair.” 

“You do worry about your hair though.” Betty smirks, reaching to tug on a strand of her sister’s blonde hair. Polly swats her hand away, but there’s a small smile on her lips. “There’s a lot of things that would’ve been nice, Pol. Like this, and restaurants and movies. It must’ve been nice to not know how to shoot a gun. To never have to shoot one.” 

“You’re getting philosophical now, I prefer it when you science the shit out of the world.” 

“I have layers.” 

Polly laughs and silence takes over again and Betty imagines them on what used to be of the world, a reality they never knew, a reality they heard stories about, saw lost tapes of movies. of DVDs, heard about it songs. She imagines what it’d be like to have a home, she thinks she’d like New York, the one of the past, she thinks she’d like a bustling city and a favourite coffee shop and maybe college. Friends. A kind of simplicity in life. She wishes that she could’ve been mundane. 

But here they are. Surviving because truly that’s all they could do. 

If it’s real, if the lead they have is real then this could be their chance of living without fear, of a real life. The thought crosses her mind so many times, images of a happy life, of laughter, of no more pain. And for the past five years, it’s all she’s ever wanted. 

•

They stay in the courthouse until daylight and Betty had been right when she said it was clear. Having a warm place, a safe place to sleep in is always the priority, they’d brought enough food and they’d hunted on the way to the city so she thinks they have enough for a while. Polly loses track of their inventory so she’s not letting her do it anymore. She’s good at hunting, though. Bow and arrow is more her style, has always been what she’s good at, even back at their first camp. She remembers the silent pride, never spoken, of their father. How he discreetly beamed when Polly hit every target with ease. 

She misses them. Sometimes the pain is so suffocating, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Her usual response is just to move forward, to keep looking, to finish what her mother started and what she continued. But it’s hard not to lose hope, when it feels like surviving a day gets harder by the hour. 

For now, it’s getting to their destination, safe and alive, that moves them forward. It’s the next chance at hope. Or the trail to it, at least. 

“Why are you staring?”

“Why do have to be creepy and feel me staring?” 

Betty laughs softly. “What is it?” 

“I was thinking about mom.” Betty shuts her eyes, her packing coming to a stop, as Polly brings them up again. “She always said if there was anyone that could figure anything out, it would be you. And I know we’re tired and living in this goddamn hell hole is the worst but mom believed in you. Finding the cure.”

“Polly.” Betty warns, her back still turned. 

“I’m just saying I believe in you too. Remember when mom and dad brought us with them on patrol for the first time-“

Polly doesn’t stop though, she keeps talking and Betty isn’t up for this. Not right now. She’s tired and she doesn’t want to think about it and it’s all bubbling up to the surface, nails digging into her palms. She can’t do it. But Polly doesn’t shut up, reminiscing and it’s like a bomb ticking inside of her. 

“Shut up Polly.” Her voice rings out, when she yells, and Polly’s eyes widen. “Stop talking.” She tells her weakly. 

But she knows she fucked up by the way Polly immediately shuts down, her face reminding her of her father, her bubbly smile diminishing to cold stare. 

“I’m sorry-“

“Save it. I’ll be outside waiting for you.”

“Polly, you shouldn’t be out there-“ But she’s out of the door faster than lightening and Betty’s left with emptiness. 

Gathering her things as fast as she can, a bad feeling in her chest as she bolts out of the door. Had they been too loud. Clickers could probably spot them for some distance and they’d been yelling. Why the fuck did this disease have to give them echolocation? Only a very twisted mind would dream this up. And perhaps it was a higher entity that decided humans were getting a little too comfortable in their mundane little lives. 

The bad feeling persists. 

And Betty’s feelings are never off. 

Because Polly’s voice is louder than she’d been before when she told her to shut up. It’s blood chilling scream that pierces through her, her own name being called out like that. Polly’s at the entrance, fighting off runners, but there’s so many of them, she doesn’t know where they came from. 

“Polly!” She calls out, getting their attention as well. She shoots a few of them quick enough to get to her sister, knifing them to get off of her. They manage them together, the shotgun coming in handy when Clickers start showing show up. “Where the fuck are they coming from?!” 

“Underground!” 

Betty wonders how the hell they missed it when they sweeper the building but she’s perhaps answered when there’s someone else shooting at them. 

“We got to move!” The voice calls out. It’s a man, she can’t see him yet but she can hear his footsteps running. She sees him throwing a grenade at the group that’s coming at them. “Run! Run!”

There’s a window open and they speed up towards it as the grenade keeps runners clickers busy with the sound and they make their escape. They run out, breathing heavily as they all stop for a moment in the light of day. 

It’s the first time she takes a good look at the guy that had basically saved them. He’s in a T-shirt, covered with a leather jacket, a shotgun to his shoulder, trying to catch his breath. What strikes her is how blue his eyes seem to be, even if his face is all dirty. They could all use a good bath, really. But she can’t afford to trust, not in these trying times, she thinks bitterly. 

“Think we’re safe now.” He says softly. “You guys okay?” 

Betty points her gun at him. “Who are you?”

He raises his hands, sighing softly. “I just saved your life. If I wanted you dead, I would’ve left you there to die.” 

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Betty...” Polly places her arm on her shoulder. 

“The name’s Jughead.”

“Not WLF?” 

“Nah, I’m no wolf, trust me.” He says it a little aggressively, his eyes intense. “We’re on the same side here. Betty, right?” 

She puts her gun down, nodding, eyes still burning into him. 

“Where you headed?” 

“What could’ve been a fireflies’ lab.”

He nods. “Salt Lake City, right? That’s my lead.”

“You’re looking for it too?”

“The lab? Yes. So, maybe if we stick together, we’ll get there alive, why not?”

She doesn’t know what prompts her to say yes. But they’re going in the same direction any way so really it doesn’t make much of a difference. She just wants to get there by sundown. Maybe then, this day will be something other than absolute dogshit. 

•

The trek so far isn’t the worst she’s been on. The road is decent and they haven’t found any of them blocked. According to her map, they’re on the right path. She just hopes the lead is right and the lab is there. She’d been one step closer, just like this, before, so close to grasping it. 

They’d been close to the cure, she thinks, they had been. But she’d been too young to understand it then. She knew enough now, though, that they would be doing it at the expense of a life, she had the research they’d done and what her mother had left her with. To save millions of others they’d kill a child and it weighed heavily on her. The people she hurt to save her own life. What happened in that hospital, the lab, whatever you want to call it, the last of the Fireflies, had been a product of survival too. Selfishness. But she could understand it. She doesn’t know if she’d be able to take it if she had to let someone kill Polly for the world to survive. When you have nothing left in the world but one person and something threatens to take them away, you tend not to care about the greater good. 

Betty thinks she knows the way out. The path to the cure. And they don’t have to kill anyone. She does need the tests they’d done on the kid, who wasn’t a kid anymore, five years later. She reckons they’ll be incomplete but there’s very few people in the world looking for documents, especially when all you need nowadays is a gun and yourself to make it out. And even if they were searching for it, they wouldn’t know what to look for. Betty does. 

“The bridge is down.” She hears Jughead. He’s a far ahead from them. “We’re gonna have to find another way to get over.” He walks towards them, as Betty looks around. 

“Down there.” Jughead nods his head at her and they both start walking. She’s a bit lost her thoughts when she notices Polly lags behind. “Polly!” He keeps walking while Betty waits for her sister. “You okay?” 

Polly nods. “Tired of walking.”

Betty rolls her eyes. “You always are.” Theywalk in silence for a moment and Betty sighs softly. “I’m sorry, Pol.” 

“It’s okay.”

“Let me apologize, please. I don’t want this hanging over us.”

“It won’t, Betty.” Polly assures her. “You’re all I have left in the world. I know how you get about mom and dad, sometimes I just...I wanna talk about them, cause I feel like I’ll forget them if I don’t.” 

With a nod, Betty grabs her sister’s hand, squeezing it in hers. “I know.” 

“Keep up!” Jughead yells out at them. He’s a little infuriating, Betty’s come to learn and absolutely insufferable. He appears to have an extensive knowledge of old movies even though he’s seen very few of them and he’ll bring up facts to fill the silence that settles at times when Polly isn’t asking Jughead a million questions. That’s how she knows that when he was a kid, his favourite food was Cheeseburgers. And that he used to wear a beanie anywhere he went but it’d been lost somewhere between the first quarantine zones and the fall of FEDRA. He has a sister named Jellybean. And he apparently has a scar on his left left. Great. It was totally necessary for her to hear about for two hours. 

“Fuck.”

“What?” Jughead questions out loud and then he sees it. There’s a whole hoard of infected down where they need to go through, at least the fastest way there. “I guess we’re taking the long way through Salt Lake City.”

“Not the forest.” Polly groans. “We were in a forest for three days, can’t we just blow them up?” 

“Unless you can magically create bombs out of thin air, I don’t think we’ve got another option.” Betty says. “I don’t know if we should keep going or rest up for the night, maybe eat something and then go?”

“Yes, please, let us rest!” Betty rolls her eyes, with a fond smile, at her sister. “I can light a fire.” 

They set up camp under the bridge and decide to take turns sleeping. Polly volunteers to go first, obviously and Betty takes the first watch. Jughead has no problem on sleeping either, he’d apparently been traveling before so she takes first watch. 

The night is quiet and she wonders what it’d been like before. Were cities ever this quiet in the night? Was it easy to sleep, safe and sound in a bed? What worried people? Their jobs, their children? Where to go on vacation? Where to eat out the next day? She wonders what they lived for, before people started turning into monsters? 

She watches the stars above her, lost in thought until she hears Jughead talking in his sleep. She doesn’t mean to listen, lord knows she has enough nightmares to last a lifetime. But she can’t help but want to know more about him. 

“God no, dad, please don’t-“ The rest she can’t really make out other than ‘no’ and ‘stop’ because a moment later, he wakes startled. She sits up, sitting cross legged. 

“You okay?” She questions softly when he calms down a little. “Jughead?” His eyes focus on her and he nods, leaning against the wall. “You moan in your sleep.”

“Sorry. Nightmares. Couldn’t e mail my therapist to reschedule my appointment.” He jokes and she laughs. “So, you were with the Fireflies? Before?” 

She notices him looking at the faded symbol on her backpack. “My parents were, yeah. I don’t...know if where you stand...”

Jughead shrugs. “It’s just another community. I’ve long let go of judging anyone. People do what they have to do to survive.”

“Maybe.” She murmurs. “What about you? Not a wolf, so...?” 

“Rogue, I guess. We’re not military, it’s just a gated community, trying to create something that’s somewhat stable, I guess. I figure there’s plenty like that out there.”

“We were at a camp, a month ago. They were gracious enough to let us in and we helped out for a bit so yes, I’m sure there’s plenty of decent people out there.” 

“You said your parents were Fireflies? Are they...?” He questions tentatively.

“They were killed, they raided our zone. Polly and I made it out.” 

He nods understandingly. “I’ve lost people too.” 

“It’s a universal fact, nowadays.” She smiles softly. “She’s all I have left.”

“Same with Jellybean.” There’s a kind of warmth in his eyes that she can’t exactly explain, like they’ve seen through much pain, like she has. She doesn’t know what his goal is, really, what he’s looking for but there’s something about him that makes her feel safe, like she can trust him. And she hates that feeling. It’s hard to fully trust anyone, these days and she’s not sure she can. “You should sleep.” 

“I think I’ll stay awake for a little longer.”

“You still don’t trust me.” 

“Maybe I just can’t sleep.” 

He chuckles. “Well, your sister seems perfectly fine with-“ His face falls when he looks over at Polly. She’s still sleeping but her arm is hanging out of her sleeping bag. 

And as Betty shifts her eyes over to her sister, there, in red, is a bite. It’s on her arm and it’s heavily infected. 

“No...” Betty breathes out. “No. No. No.” 

“Betty, if this is...from the courthouse-“

“Not her. Oh god.” Her eyes widen and jumps over to her sister as Jughead does the same. His eyes are on Betty, there’s a silent sadness in them but Betty refuses for this to be what it is. 

This can’t happen. Not to Polly. Please no. 

“We have to wake her up. It might be too late to...” 

“Polly.” She shakes her sister awake and Polly slowly opens her eyes. “Pol, oh god.”

“What? What’s going on?” 

“Polly...” She’s already sobbing before she even gets the words out and Polly glances at her arm, eyes widening. 

“I was bitten.” She realises. 

“You were.” Jughead murmurs, his eyes on Betty, knowing what has to come next. 

“Shit...” The older sister breathes out. But the decision is already made. She doesn’t want to become like them, like the horde down in the city. She doesn’t want to lose herself, it’s the worst way to die and if she’s going then it’ll be on her own terms. “Betty...baby, listen to me.”

“No, Polly.” But she shakes her head, placing a hand on her cheek. 

“It’s time for me to finally be the big sister, okay? You have to let me do this? We promised remember? If either of us ever got bitten, we’d-“

“I can’t kill you, Polly.” She chokes out, her chest hurts, everything hurts. They were fine an hour ago, they were fine. This can’t be happening. She can’t lose her. 

“I know.” Polly sniffles. “That’s why I’ll do it. I’m gonna die like myself, okay?” 

“I don’t want you to go.” At her sister’s words, Polly smiles softly. “Pol...I don’t wanna be alone.” Jughead takes this moment to give them some privacy as Polly lets Betty lie down with her. 

“You’re the strongest person I know.” She murmurs. “You’ll get through this, Betty. And you’ll find the goddamn cure to this. I believe in you, just like mom did. You have to live, Betty. I know it’ll feel like emptiness but you have to pull through. You have to promise me, you have to promise me you won’t stop until you fix everything.”

“I promise, Pol.”

“I love you. More than anything in this world.” 

“I love you too.” They take a moment, looking at each other. And Betty realises how in a few moments, she won’t have her sister anymore. She’ll be alone. Nothing left for her and there’s nothing quite like feeling in her chest at the thought of never seeing Polly’s smile ever again. Of never hearing her complain about long walks, of her memories of her parents and concern to look good even in this place. 

“This is getting worse.” She looks down at her arm. “I don’t have long before...I have to do it, Betty.” Betty closes her eyes, nodding her head. “I’m going to go out into the woods and I’ll do it there, away from you. I don’t you to see it happen.” 

It’s fifteen minutes later, after Betty’s held her sister in a tight grip for one last time, that her and Jughead stand by the fire. The gunshot rings out louder than Betty’s ever head any other and there’s no other way to explain the sound that comes out of her mouth than animal like. It’s like losing a limb. She collapses to the ground but Jughead is there to catch her, as she screams. She doesn’t fight this stranger’s arms, she falls into them as she feels the emptiness Polly had spoken of. 

But she wasn’t alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hiii, upon the news of there being a The Last of Us tv show coming out way, I decided I’ll post and continue this AU I had started writing a while ago! I’m the idiot that starts a millions stories at the same time spanning wildly different genres so I’m sorry 
> 
> Tell me if you’d like to keep reading this!! I seek validation at all times and I’m starved.


End file.
